


Feelings I Keep Inside

by sunny_jordy



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Jon's having a bit of a hard time in this one, M/M, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Trauma, first work!, i'm sorry but also not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23401912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunny_jordy/pseuds/sunny_jordy
Summary: "He wants to talk to someone, but he can’t, because the someone he needs is Martin, with his gentle smile and a cup of hot tea, Martin who listens and has soft curves and unruly curls, Martin who isn’t here and he can’t simply ask him to be. Jon knows Martin must have a reason, and he trusts him, but with every day that goes by it becomes harder not to miss him."Jon doesn't really know how to deal with his emotions, but he tries.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 12
Kudos: 135





	Feelings I Keep Inside

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo first work and I'm so excited! I've been working on this basically from the moment I finished listening to season four a month ago and in the last couple of days I really got into it. I hope you'll love it as much as I loved writing this!
> 
> I should mention that this fic does include a very broken Jon, with descriptions of nightmares, dealing with trauma and a panic attack. Please do keep that in mind! <3
> 
> (Contains spoilers to season four)
> 
> Edit: fixed a few grammar mistakes and typos. If I missed something, please let me know!   
> Also, I'm back on tumblr and taking requests! Check it out [here](https://jonmartin-trash.tumblr.com/).

Jonathan Sims used to have a very organized office. That’s not to say that it was that clean or tidy; he just used to think of it as… _inappropriate_ if someone else walked into it and couldn’t figure out quickly where was what. He used to think that in a workplace, especially like the archives, needed to have some order in it. Wasn’t it the whole point of how he got to where he is? By trying to organize a little bit?

These days it barely matters.

Jon sits in the mess that used to be his more or less neat office, tape recorders and cassettes thrown around, boxes piled on top of one another, and his desk a catastrophe of papers covered with almost unreadable notes. All of this makes perfect sense to Jon; if he’s looking for something, he usually just Knows where he had last put it. Especially if it was something important.

At the moment he’s rubbing tired eyes after turning off the tape recorder which played Lucia Wright’s statement. (If he has to be honest, he isn’t sure if he really turned off the recorder or that it just shut itself down - Jon is losing track.) He feels that weird… surge of energy after reading a statement, and like every time it happens, he can’t help but hear Jude Perry’s words echoing in his mind, haunting and taunting as always - _feed your god, or it will feed on you._

Jon lets out a long sigh. He’s just so… tired. He should feel happier, he thinks, that he might actually be able to get Daisy out of that horrible coffin, but somehow he doesn’t feel any relief or satisfaction, just this… exhaustion that has come to be a part so integral of his existence he barely remembers what it is like to feel fully awake.

After a few more moments of just sitting there, he comes to the conclusion that this is not the time to try and cut off a part of himself. No, he needs to get some rest, to at least _try_ and sleep. Retrieve his powers. He’ll try tomorrow.

With a slow move typical for a man much older than he is, Jon rises from the chair and makes his way to the small cot in the storage room that serves as his bed more often than not. It isn’t the best place to sleep in, but Jon isn’t getting out of the institute a lot, what with all the monsters and avatars that are lurking around, ready to jump and attack the archival stuff if they only get the chance. And besides… The cot reminds him of simpler, happier times, times he never fathomed he’d miss - when Martin (the name makes Jon heart swell with burning heat) slept in the archives so he’d be protected from worms.

Jon turns on his night lamp, which is shaped as a ball with a cheery smile on it, and small letters that read “Go to sleep already!” The assistants bought him the lamp his first birthday on the job, alongside with the cup of coffee he uses to this day. Martin was very shy about it; Tim and Sasha thought it was hilarious. These days the presents are mostly a jarring reminder that two of his assistants are dead and the other… What _is_ Martin? Absent? Away? The specifices don’t matter - what matters is that Martin is not around and Jon painfully misses him.

Jon shakes himself from his thoughts, and with a small sigh gets on the cot and curls up into himself. Before he closes his eyes, he prays for a peaceful sleep. Just this once.

His prayers go unanswered.

_____

They get out, in the end. It apparently takes them three days and a whole bunch of tape recorders to be stuffed on top of the coffin (Jon thinks he know who left them, and it does something very weird to his heart he doesn’t have a name for), but they do. _Could’ve been worse,_ Jon tells himself. _We could’ve just stayed there. Better traumatized outside than inside the Buried._

Still, knowing he’s lucky doesn’t do much to prevent the change in his nightmares: same as before, statements he took playing in front of him again and again, but the one he took of the Buried all those months ago appears more than the others, repeating itself several times a night (Jon doesn’t want to think about what it means for Karolina Gorka.) He keeps seeing her in the Underground, being slowly suffocated to death by the narrowing walls of the cabin until the metal finally cuts her and smashes her bones to a silent death. A scream echoes again and again from somewhere in the background, but no one is there to make it. Jon has to watch and do nothing, his breath labored in his sleep, and when he wakes up in silent screaming he finds his chest feels too tight and his skin is covered with cold sweat.

In one of the first nights after they get out he has an unusual dream, one he’s not sure if it’s from the Beholding or just from his own trauma. Jon sees himself, being crushed and bended and suffocated by those dusty stone walls of the coffin - but no matter how much he has no left place to breathe, he doesn’t die, an so his torment continues. It takes Jon some time to crawl himself out from the nightmare and back to wakefulness, and afterwards he has to drink three cups of coffee in the middle of the night before the tremor in his hands stops.

Not all is bad. Now that Daisy is back, he finally has some company, and a surprisingly pleasant one. In his current state, Jon will take anything that isn’t the deafening silence of an empty room, even contempt for all he cares. But Daisy is different. She is, after all, fighting off the Hunt, and, well… getting out of the Buried together just creates a bond of solidarity and protection. Admittedly, Daisy doesn’t speak a lot, mostly listening to music or to the Archers. (Once, Jon listens to a couple of episodes with her - tries, at least, but he doesn’t understand much. Daisy tries to convince him to listen from the beginning, but still hasn’t managed it.) But even when she’s quiet, Daisy’s presence is a comfort Jon welcomes. She makes him feel less… Alone. 

Besides that, things don’t change much. Melanie is still avoiding him and Basira doesn’t trust him. On the one time Daisy manages to drag Basira along with them to the closest pub - none of them feels safe being far from the institute - Basira is quiet and suspicious, eyeing Jon as if he is about to do something, hurt someone.

_But she’s not wrong, is she, Jonathan?_ A little voice in his head asks him after they all scattered away, and Jon is back at his cot, trying his best to fall asleep, his limbs numb and his brain buzzing. _No, she’s not,_ Jon answers the voice, bites his lips, and tries very hard not to think about just a few days ago he added someone else to his collection of nightmares. A Corruption one this time, melded with a bit of Lonely. It’s almost like they have _taste,_ which doesn’t do much in the way of convincing Jon he’s not a terrible, horrible monster who is better dead than alive. There’s not a day that goes by in which he doesn’t contemplate going back into the coffin, this time staying there for good.

He still hasn’t told them. He knows the way they’ll look at him, scared, panicked, disgusted. 

Besides, Jon knows that they will stop him. And a part of him - the part which is always hungry for new collections of dread and fear - really, _really_ doesn’t want to be held back or stopped.

_____

They find out after the fifth victim, the one he found on the way to Ny-Ålesund. Jon knew it will happen sooner than later, but it doesn’t mean he likes the way it rolls. Melanie’s angry, her voice filled with hot and white feeling (rage? Contempt? He can’t tell anymore) when she speaks to him, and she avoids that as much as she can. Basira… It’s not that she’s not angry, but at least she knew what he was from the beginning, so it barely surprises her. She keeps a closer eye on him, though.

Daisy’s angry, too; but not like Melanie or Basira, and she seems to get it, in her own way. She keeps her distance for a few days, and in these days Jon records statements alone and hates himself. But it doesn’t take her long to come back. She doesn’t say much, doesn’t comment about it or lash out at him. She keeps things as they were, showing him, in her own way, that she forgives him. That she understands. And that’s more than Jon could’ve hoped for.

One time, he wonders what Martin thinks about him being one of the eldritch monsters they used to research. He can’t help but have the nagging thought that Martin is disappointed him. More than that - that Martin, somehow, hates him now, and wants nothing to do with Jon. It’s not like they’re talking much these days, but what if now Jon lost him? 

The thought just makes him frustrated and miserable, and he cries himself to sleep late at night. From then, he tries not to think about Martin at all. 

It doesn’t work, and the pain isn’t gone, but what else can he do?

_____

He thought it might get better, but it doesn’t. It just gets worse. He’s hungry for _more,_ all of the time, the statements far from being enough. He burns through them one after another, reading and reading and reading, and the tape barely clicks on, because most of them are made up, the fear isn’t _real,_ and so it doesn’t please the Eye; it doesn’t please the Archivist.

The nightmares are still there and Jon barely sleeps, and more often than not he gives up on sleep, because it seems to offer him just more exhaustion instead of the rest he longs for. He knows he can’t die from sleep deprivation, but he’s still so, so tired and his bones ache. The routine he created for himself is of work and sleep, stopping only to eat and for the occasional chat with Daisy. Basira watches him but doesn’t say much when it isn’t about work; Melanie comes to the archives only as a necessity. Her approach has softened, and she’s not that angry with Jon now, but it’s still nothing like he wishes it’d be (like it used to be for so short a time he can barely recall it.)

He wants to talk to someone, but he can’t, because the someone he needs is Martin, with his gentle smile and a cup of hot tea, Martin who listens and has soft curves and unruly curls, Martin who isn’t here and he can’t simply ask him to be. Jon knows Martin must have a reason, and he trusts him, but with every day that goes by it becomes harder not to miss him. 

So Jon bottles it up. He represses his feelings and does his best not to break up. He and Daisy spend time together and sometimes they even joke and that cheers him up a little - their conversations are the peak points of his days. Sometimes, when Jon lies in his cot and stares off blankly, trying to delay his sleep in a few more minutes, he has to choke down the tears of pain and sorrow and longing. When he does cry, he makes sure to be as quiet as he can be; he doesn’t want to wake anyone else.

It’s absurd, he thinks later, that this is what brought him to such a state of sobbing. He goes to the kitchenette to make himself the fourth cup of coffee for the day when he notices something’s missing - Martin’s yellow bee cup. It used to be his favorite. Of course, it wasn’t used for months now, but since Jon was back in the archives he made a point to wash it every day, in some hope that it will be used again someday soon. It wasn’t much, but it made him feel a little better. But now it was gone, missing from its usual spot on the drying rack.

Jon tries very hard not to panic, but his hands still start to shake. _No need to start freaking out, Jon. It’s simply a cup, probably someone made some tea in it._ But he doesn’t manage to calm down, and his thoughts are racing on: _what if someone threw it away, seeing it wasn’t being used? What if it was Peter, or the Web, or - or anyone, really , who wanted to have a go at me and take away the little I have left? Or maybe it was… No, I can’t hope for that. Silly._ Jon chuckles bitterly to himself, his heart still beating hard against his chest.

He checks the sink first - maybe he missed something - but it’s not there. So Jon starts opening drawers and looking through shelves, once quickly and then more thoroughly, as though he’ll find something new the second time. He doesn’t, of course, which doesn’t contribute much to his rising sense of stress or to stopping the growing sense of prickling in his eyes.

Jon practically storms out of the kitchenette and into the assistance office in five seconds, pushing the door with such force it bangs against the wall. The sound makes Basira drop the book she ןs reading and Daisy jumps in her chair, spilling a bit of tea on the floor. Jon’s breath is quick, his eyes wide, searching, then catching a glimpse of yellow in Daisy’s hands. At once he almost deflates, leaning - slumping? - tiredly against the door frame, and he feels silent tears finally leave his eyes and roll down his cheeks. _Stupid Jon._ He scolds himself. _Stupid, idiot, fragile and delicate Jon. It’s just a cup, for God’s sake. Out of all the things in the world, you think that is what the Web would go for?_

“Jon? Are you alright?” In his shock he doesn’t even notice Daisy stood up from her chair and made her way to him until she’s in front of him, waving her hand up and down in some attempt to catch his attention. “Jon?”

He sniffs and chuckles, his laugh short and sad. There’s not even bitterness in his voice, just exhaustion. “Nothing. I was just… Acting stupid. Paranoia, I suppose.”

“Well, what happened?” Basira voice comes from beside her desk. She hasn’t made a move, just watched.

“I - I just couldn’t find Martin’s cup, it usually hangs there…,” his voice dies down. “As I said, stupid. Sorry for bothering like that.” Jon clears his throat, trying to sound normal, even though his eyes are still glistening with tears. “I’ll leave you to it.” He’s already turning to go back to his office, his coffee forgotten. 

“Jon, wait.” A hand grabs his arm, and he flinches from the touch, an automatic reflex of a body more damaged than cared for. “Sorry.” The hold loosens and Jon turns back around, facing Daisy. Her face are determined, but her eyes are soft, and she does her best to give him a smile. “Mind for a cup of tea?”

Jon’s first instinct is to refuse; to push Daisy away, to tell her he’ll be fine and it’s nothing to worry about, he’s just having one of those days. But Jon is tired and hurting and alone, and he can’t do this anymore. Not like that.

“Sure,” his voice is hoarse from the tears he’s still trying to choke down, with not much success. “Sounds like a good idea.”

They go to the kitchenette, and Jon keeps sniffing and wiping his eyes over and over again, and Daisy doesn’t comment about it but hands him a box of tissue paper and insists on making him tea while he sits down and calms down. Jon tries: he focuses on his breathing and does his best not to feel foolish for having a panic attack over not finding a fucking cup of tea. He stares at the table in front of him and cries silently until the tears dry and his chest feels achingly empty.

“Here.” Daisy puts down a steaming cup of tea in front of him, and he offers her a weak but true smile of gratitude. “Thank you, Daisy.” He takes his tea and sips, feeling a little better. They sit there in silence for a few minutes, Jon drinking his mint and honey tea and Daisy leaning backwards in her chair and relaxing.

“Sorry for taking Martin’s cup,” she breaks the quiet. “Didn’t think about it. My cup broke yesterday and I just picked something else.”

“It’s alright, Daisy.” Jon’s voice is gentle, tired. “You couldn’t have known.”

“Yeah.” She thinks for a moment. “You good?”

Jon hesitates, and then his shoulders slump as he gives up on pretending. He puts the cup of tea back down. “No. No, not really.” He starts fiddling with the hem of his sweater, not sure what else to say beyond that. It sums it up. It doesn’t tell anything at all.

Daisy’s voice is gentler when she speaks again. “You want a hug?” 

Jon raises his look. After a moment he gives her a short sad smile. “Yes, that sounds good.” He gets up on his feet and lets himself sink down into Daisy’s embrace, his muscles relaxing into the hug. Jon is mostly bones and Daisy’s not in much better shape, but the hug is still soft and comforting, filling both of them with warmth. Jon closes his eyes and allows himself to be safe for a moment.

“I miss him so much,” Jon’s words come out in a rusted voice. He feels vulnerable and open, but not that much alone anymore.

“I know,” Daisy whispers, and the arms around him tighten a little. She doesn’t say anything else, and neither does he. They can’t tell each other that it will be okay, or even better, because that is not the kind of promises you can make in the life they live. All they have left is comfort, and they’ll keep offering it as long as they can.

_____

The night he finds out how to leave the institute, the night… the night he goes to Martin and something in him shatters, Jon tells everyone else and then locks himself in his office. For a long time he just sits in his chair and stares at the room around him - the dim lighted shelves, the piles of cassettes, the empty cup of coffee he always forgets in the middle of drinking until it gets cold - and he doesn’t do anything else. Just sits and stares, trying very hard not to think or feel anything.

Then he can’t hold it back anymore, and Jon cries, and wishes with all his heart he would have done something else, or just said the right thing, but it’s too late for that now. Maybe he should have told Martin why he really came to him first. Maybe he should have confessed that for a long time now, more than he admitted even to himself, he loved Martin so fiercely it burned.

Maybe then Jon wouldn’t feel as though he’s about to lose Martin in some way, if he hasn’t already.

_____

He went to Melanie and Georgie. He phoned both Daisy and Basira at least ten times each. He even went to Helen, who just laughed him off. No one wanted to help him or could help him, and he feels lost.

So Jon waits for Daisy and Basira in the assistance office, pulls on the hem of his shirt like he always does when he’s stressed, and lets his thoughts wonder. He knows Basira and Daisy will come back at some point soon, and according to the tape that was left on his table, he still has some time. A few hours, at least, but he hopes he’ll know what to do before the time comes.

Jon focuses carefully, trying to Know something about Peter or Martin or what they’re about to do, but he finds nothing but static, and so he backs away. He can’t let himself burn his powers on this, not now, when - at least according to Helen - he needs to be at his best state.

Jon’s worried, and he’s scared. There’s a part of him that tells him he’s overreacting, that he’s probably being manipulated, and that he needs to trust Martin that whatever it is he’s planning, he knows what he’s doing. _But I know what I heard_ , the other part of him says. _Peter said Martin wouldn’t be coming back from this. If it doesn’t mean death… Then what_ does _it mean?_

His trail off thoughts is cut abruptly by quick and loud footsteps approaching him. Jon bolts right up. It has to be Daisy and Basira. Must be. He needs this to be them.

Jon’s heart is hammering in his chest, and something in him knows everything’s about to change. 

The door to the office opens, and a tape recorder clicks on.

**Author's Note:**

> Something I wanted to make clear: even though Jon thinks otherwise, he wasn't to blame for his panic attack and it wasn't foolish! Panic attacks often feel like you're acting out and I just want to say that nothing in this is your fault and I absolutely do not support the view it is, but I think that what Jon feels about it.


End file.
